The unveiling of the new Chelsea manager, Luiz Felipe Scolari, set hearts fluttering this week. Wherever you looked there he was in thrilling close-up: the no-nonsense nose-width 'tache, the gaucho swagger. And of course the cool, flat stare that always seems, somehow, to suggest he is in the process of taking off his watch, telling his wife to look away and making horrible crackling noises with his great hairy knuckles.

There's something new going on here, another strand to the recent trend in English football for hiring managers who look like they really want to tell you off. Spurs were drawn to Juande Ramos by his perpetually enraged eyebrows. The reign of Fabio Capello has so far been defined by his sense of incredulous disappointment with pretty much everything in his immediate eyeline. Scolari pushes the envelope further.

He doesn't want to tell you off. He wants to beat you up instead.

The sense of wanting to beat you up is palpable. Meeting that stare you can feel the grip of the Scolari headlock, smell the oppressively masculine Scolari bodily odour as, clenched expertly in his armpit, you're marched about the room with one huge Scolari hand astringently scouring your scalp.

The Manager Who Wants To Beat You Up may be new and fresh and exciting, but English football has travelled a long road to get here. The early days of the professional game saw the rise of the Manager Who Quietly Disapproves. Long-serving, consigned to the shadows, the Manager Who Quietly Disapproves was often indistinguishable from his contemporaries, Manager In A Brown Hat and Manager Who Dies Suddenly Of The Grippe.

Progress was slow until the appearance in the early 1970s of the Manager Who Likes A Good Time: a squat, combustible figure, prone to fist-clenching gestures and evocative of a Drambuie-and-sun-lounger-in-Majorca version of the dolce vita. The floodgates had been opened. The birth of the TV punditry panel saw the emergence not just of the Manager Who Tells Jokes, but also the Manager Who Visibly Sweats and The Manager With Big Hair - the Dagenham-inflected geezer-manager with his Sinatra loyalties, his indefinable air of showbiz and his sulky, medallion-based housewife appeal.

The creation of the Premier League saw further rapid revolution. Its early days brought the Manager Who Wants To Be Your Friend (matey, tracksuited, doomed to fail) and his close relation, the Manager Constantly On The Verge Of Bursting Into Tears, a strain that ran right from the messianic nearly-man to the star-struck backroom patsy.

Adapting rapidly, the home-grown coach repackaged himself as the Manager Who Wants To Sell You An Office Photocopier, with his plastic headset and air of can-do; or as the more mercurial and disaster-prone Manager Who Goes On About Pilates. At the same time the influx of foreign coaches brought us the revolutionary Manager Who Makes You Feel Guilty About How Terrible Your Diet Is.

Before Scolari this overseas influence seemed to have reached a natural hiatus with the appearance of the Manager Who Appears Sneeringly Convinced That Your Wife Finds Him Irresistible. But these things never stay still for long. The unveiling of the Manager Who Wants To Beat You Up was a coup for Chelsea. It also makes you wonder where this kind of thing might end up, particularly in an era of ever more distracted and wilful celebrity players.

What to do, for example, when Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsène Wenger finally call it a day? My vote goes to The Opportunist Burglar Manager Who Leaves Your Urine-Stained Bentley In a Lay-By Off The M6. Or, failing that, The Manager Who Coshes You From Behind With A Sock Full Of Snooker Balls.